34 posts from March 2008

March 21, 2008

If you crave a pleasant architectural shock, head to the eastern edge of downtown Chicago and look up. There you’ll find a skyscraper taking shape with projecting white balconies that curve in and out, startling in their irregularity. They ripple over the building’s blue-green glass walls like a wave in motion, bringing the sensual style of the Spanish architect Antoni Gaudi to sober, right-angled Chicago.

The skyscraper is called Aqua (at left), and when it is completed in early 2010, it will soar to a height of 82 stories — an exuberant exception to the banal cracker boxes around it. It took daring to pull off something like this, which is one of the adjectives people use to describe the skyscraper’s architect, Jeanne Gang. Among the others: striking, visionary, pragmatic and ambitious.

Just 44 years old, which is young in a profession where practitioners often don’t hit their stride until 60, Gang is one of the rising stars who have put new kick in Chicago’s architectural tank after a decade of low-octane performance. Aqua, much hyped as one of the world’s tallest skyscrapers designed by a female-headed firm, marks her leap from medium- to large-scale work. She is making a geographic leap, too, having just landed a major international commission — a 1.25-million-square-foot residential complex of towers and town homes in the big southern India city of Hyderabad.

The front page of today's of New York Times has a story sure to make real estate developers in Chicago and elsewhere around the country shudder. It reports that the economic slump is likely to delay key parts of the Frank Gehry-designed, $4 billion Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn, including an office tower and three residential buildings.

The news comes as people in Chicago architecture and real estate circles speculate on whether developer Garrett Kelleher, who has already started building the foundations of the Santiago Calatrava-designed Chicago Spire (at left), will be able to complete the project. While the twisting, 2,000-foot-tall Spire is planned as a single building, not a large complex like Atlantic Yards, its projected cost is nonetheless substantial--reportedly in excess of $1 billion.

But a spokeswoman for the Spire says things are moving along well and that units are selling briskly, particularly overeas, where the dollar's plunge makes the units more attractive to buyers. She's not disclosing sales numbers, however. Here's an edited transcript of our Q & A (my questions were sent to her on Wednesday):

March 20, 2008

More than 60 years ago, when Mies van der Rohe designed the iconic, steel-and-glass Farnsworth House for Chicago nephrologist Edith Farnsworth, the house was conceived as a weekend retreat--far from the steel and stone canyons of the Loop, a place where its owner could relax amid the pastoral simplicity of a site along the Fox River.

Well, guess what? Sprawl is catching up to the Farnsworth House, as anybody who's been to the house recently knows. Roads leading to the house, now owned by the National Trust for Historic Preservation and open for tours, are lined with new subdivisions. In today's Tribune, reporters Russell Working and Darnell Little chronicle the news that Kendall County, in which the house is located, is now the fastest-growing country in the United States.

March 19, 2008

It's official: The bottom portion of Mies van der Rohe's former IBM Building will be converted into a hotel. Now known as 330 N. Wabash, the former IBM Building was originally designed as an office building. Inside, Mies' column-free "universal space" will facilitate the conversion of floors 2-13 into a five-star hotel--as yet unnamed (Mies Motel? probably not) -- across Wacker from the Trump International Hotel & Tower. Landmarks advocates have expressed concern that the city's recent landmark designation of the former IBM Building isn't restrictive enough and will allow the hotel's operators to chip away at the tower's Miesian minimalism. The Tribune's Robert Manor has the story in today's paper.

March 18, 2008

Let’s dispense, first, with the Luddite buttons that said “No Skyscrapers.” There already are skyscrapers in downtown Evanston, and they’re not going to disappear. Let’s also dispense with the polemical posters that showed a hulking skyscraper rising over a row of cute Victorian houses. Evanston is not Mayberry. Evanston is half-suburb, half-city, and it is ground zero right now in the roiling debate over the extent to which America’s suburbs should invite that symbol of urban ambition and angst — the skyscraper — into their downtowns.

In this case, we’re talking about a very tall skyscraper, at least in relative terms. The 49-story, 523-foot condominium tower that developers James Klutznick and Tim Anderson want to erect in the heart of downtown Evanston would be the tallest building in Chicago’s suburbs — nearly twice as tall as Evanston’s current tallest building. A public hearing for the proposal Monday night, held by the City Council’s Planning and Development Committee, bared clashing visions for the future of suburban downtowns. It also revealed that the plan has yet to effectively bridge this divide.

The Tribune's Deborah Horan covered contentious hearing last night on the proposed 49-story tower in Evanston. Here is her account of the meeting (I will post an analysis of the plan later today):

To some in Evanston, a 49-story condominium tower in the center of town would amount to an eyesore with no economic value for other residents, who would be saddled with congestion and a glut of condos.

To others, the glass and steel structure (model, at left) that would be nearly twice as high as any other building in Evanston could become the city's Eiffel Tower, a symbol of progress that defines the skyline and creates the kind of bustle and commerce the city needs to grow.

Both opinions were voiced, sometimes forcefully, at a packed meeting Monday night at Evanston's Civic Center, where the City Council's Planning and Development Committee met in a special session to hear public comments about the proposed tower at 708 Church St., a triangular lot bordered by Orrington and Sherman Avenues.

March 17, 2008

There's a public hearing tonight on the proposal to build the tallest skyscraper in Chicago's suburbs in Evanston, a plan that has spawned vocal opposition. On the lawns of homes near Evanston's Central Street train station, for example, there are blue yard signs picturing an enormous high-rise slab looming over a low-rise cityscape. "Stop the Tower," the signs say.

The proposal, designed by Chicago architect Laurence Booth, calls for a 49-story condominium tower at 708 Church St., the so-called "Fountain Square" site in the heart of Evanston's downtown. Evanston's Plan Commission has narrowly approved the plan, by a vote of 4-3, and the City Council's Planning & Development Committee will hold a special hearing on it tonight at 6:30 at the Evanston Civic Center, 2100 Ridge Ave.

The controversy over the plan has drawn national attention, including a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. Opponents have mobilized and are articulating their arguments against the proposal at www.evanstoncrd.org. Images of the plan, both in its original and current states, are available at skyscraper web sites. My initial take on the plan, when it was announced last year, was positive but with reservations. I'll be heading to the meeting tonight to see whether it's gotten better or worse.

The latest issue of the Yale Alumni Magazine has a beautifully-crafted, brutally-honest profile of the captivating, combative, enormously influential architectural historian Vincent Scully.

The profile is anything but typical alumni magazine pap. It chronicles Scully's foibles, like his affair with a married Yale art history faculty member in the early 1960s, as well as his no-holds-barred style of commenting on architects' work. In the end, Scully emerges as a heroic figure--not simply a brilliant lecturer or an extraordinary historian, but someone who has opened thousands of eyes to the whole of the built environment and the way it intersects with human experience.

It all rings true, and I can say that from first-hand experience: As a graduate student at Yale in the 1980s, I was fortunate enough to study with Scully. Since then, he's had only occasional intersections with Chicago, serving on the jury that selected Thomas Beeby's design for the Harold Washington Library Center and occasionally lecturing here. If you've never had the privilege of hearing Scully's resonant voice, the profile also comes with a recording of writer Richard Conniff's interviews with this master of architectural history, who at age 87 remains as passionate and as keenly intelligent as ever.

March 15, 2008

After a public hearing Thursday about a soon-to-be-demolished Arts and Crafts style house in Winnetka, it should be apparent to all concerned that there's no safety net protecting landmark-quality houses by non-brand name architects in Chicago's suburbs.

When a Frank Lloyd Wright house is threatened, alarms are sounded and emails go out in search of a buyer. More often than not, these efforts work. Houses are saved or moved. Communities don't allow their character to be destroyed.

But the case of the John L. Hamilton house at 412 Walnut St. in Winnetka is different. Hamilton was the partner of the distinguished Chicago architect Dwight Perkins, whose credits include the Lincoln Park Zoo's linon house. No one knows which one of them designed the 98-year-old home. And it really shouldn't matter. The house is a beautiful presence in its leafy neighborhood, with art glass windows and broad eaves that clearly connect it to Wright's Prairie Style.

March 14, 2008

So you drive a Prius, use energy-saving lightbulbs and have seen "An Inconvenient Truth" six times? Well, now you can be green when you remodel your home.

The American Society of Interior Designers Foundation and the U.S. Green Building Council today released what they bill their nation's first guidelines for environmentally-friendly home remodeling. Read all about it below--and promise that you won't print out this story(wasting precious paper) unless you really need to.